Hit hard twice in five years. First by Hurricane Charlie and now by a devastating economic storm that has swept the entire country, the residents of Punta Gorda have learned that recovery only comes through hard work, commitment and team work.
The Think Thursday Tourism Initiative is an effort to attract visitors to Punta Gorda in order to stimulate our local economy. The idea is for retail businesses and restaurants to stay open late every Thursday (similar to gallery walk) and for there to be special events and activities that will encourage visitors to come and spend the day. It's a community wide effort that every business and every resident of Punta Gorda can participate in.
This initiative is a collaborative effort of the Punta Gorda Chamber of Commerce, The Punta Gorda Downtown Merchants Association, MainStreet Punta Gorda, TEAM Punta Gorda, the City of Punta Gorda and many merchants, businesses, clubs, organizations and individuals in Punta Gorda.
Why Thursdays? Punta Gorda already has some great things happening on Thursdays, gallery walk, car shows, trolley rides and music in the park to name a few. Weekends are already filled with special events like the Wine Festival, The Punta Gorda Block Party, the Hibiscus Festival, the Sullivan Street Craft Festival, the Plein Air Fest, etc. We do not want this initiative to compete with those events. Rather we want to take a typically slow day in the middle of the week and make it one of Punta Gorda's busiest! During season most of our visitors are retirees who are just as happy to take an adventure on a Thursday as any other day of the week. And, it's a day not already taken by neighboring communities...if it's Thursday and you're looking for something to do we want you to automatically think of Punta Gorda!
Everyone has a role to play. Here's how:
Residents: If you are a resident you can help stimulate the economy by simply attending our Think Thursday events...
with a friend or two in tow! Consider yourself part of our promotions committee. Your job is to help us introduce the community to others by inviting others to these events.
Residents can also volunteer their time and talents. You can teach classes, give lectures, assist with special events, become a history guide and more! We challenge every resident of Punta Gorda to volunteer at least one Thursday this season!
Businesses: This is not a downtown initiative - it is community wide. The main goal of the Think Thursday Tourism Initiative is to bring potential new customers to our community. How you harvest these customers is up to you! We encourage you to be creative and think outside the box. Demonstrations, tours, tastings, special offers, coupons, etc. are all good ways to attract customers to your business.
The Think Thursday Tourism Initiative will give you a way to communicate with potential customers. Each week, we will post two pages on a community web site. One will list the events planned for the week and the other will be a page of special offers, coupons, etc. that will help draw guests to your business.
Click here to see sample page. We hope you'll take advantage of both of these opportunities.
All types of businesses can participate. A construction firm with a large conference room might make the room available for a special event. A bank could host a lecture by a visiting author, a Marina might offer a seminar on basic boat maintenace, a brokerage firm might offer a seminar on the history of the American Stock Market, etc. In a nutshell, it's a great opportunity to draw people to your business and to take advantage of shared marketing!
Civic Clubs and Organizations: We need your help, too! When we say this is a community wide effort we mean it! We know you have talented people in your organization! Think outside the box!
One thing that a civic club or association could do is adopt business downtown or at Fishermen's Village. These businesses spend a lot of money to hire musicians, provide refreshments and pay for extra staffing for these special events. It was hard enough for them to do this once a month, now we are asking them to do it four times a month. You could sponsor a business by providing volunteer labor to help with their events or contribute to the funding of musicians, etc.
We are also hoping that local clubs and organizations will contribute financially to our marketing effort. We can plan weeks of great Thursdays but if we don't tell people about them no one will come! Thank about being a web page sponsor!
At Pies & Plates, I'm approached almost daily by social and civic organizations for donations, door prizes, hole sponsorships, etc. We happily give what we can. But I would say to the organizations in this community "Ask not what the small businesses can do for you, Ask what you can do for them!" The stronger the businesses become the more they'll be able to donate and help with your causes.
Shared Responsibility: The key to the success of this Initiative is that it is a SHARED EFFORT. The Think Thursday committee will not be planning or putting on events. Demonstrations, lectures, classes, etc. will be put on by businesses, civic organizations and talented indivduals. What the Think Thursday committee will do is promote these events in a collective fashion! By marketing them together we'll create a BIG EVENT! There are many, many events that are already offered that could be scooped under this umbrella.
Working for us this year is the fact that people will be looking for economical adventures. There's never been a better time to capture the day tripping market. Working against us this year is high gas prices. If we want to attract visitors from surrounding communities we have to make the trip seem worth their while! The Think Thursday Initiate makes that happen!
Themes and Structure: Every month there will be four themes, one for each week. The themes will be repeated each month. Here are suggested themes and examples of how individuals, businesses and civic organizations can be involved.
It's a Dog Walk (First Thursday of every month): The thought with this is to have something similar to gallery walk but to include our four legged friends. Dog owners love pet friendly events and will travel miles to attend them! But, you don't have to be a dog lover to attend this event. If you enjoy gallery walk, you'll enjoy this event as well.
On this day, a veterinarian might offer a free lecture on Traveling Tips for Pet Parents and offer a coupon for $10 off your next vet visit. A sketch artist might set up on Harold Court and do character sketches of dogs and their owners. A civic association might do a Pet & Owner look alike contest. An individual might volunteer to hand out poop bags on Marion Avenue or man a doggie water station. Potential events might include: A canine cop demonstration, toe nail trimming by a local groomer, poetry reading with a pet theme, a class on how to take digital photos of your pet, etc.
A nursery might offer a class on environmental landscaping. An artist might offer an outdoor drawing class. A local sailing club could offer tips on navigating Charlotte Harbor. A local pub could host a dart or billiards competition. A car club could host a car show. A civic group could host a small fishing tournament. An individual could give a class on how to make Christmas ornaments from sea shells, etc. What's your talent?
Click here to see Sample Web Page - For the Fun of It
Every Thing Leads to Gallery Walk (Third Thursday of every month): The Punta Gorda Downtown Merchant's Association has already made this a great event! What we hope to do now is make it an all day event.
A local business could do a class on the art of cake decorating. A flower shop should could offer a seminar on artistic flower arranging. The city could sponsor side walk drawing at Liashley Park. A garden center could do a class on landscape design. A civic club could sponsor a visiting author and the lecture could be held in a bank conference room. An individual could teach a class on scrapbooking.
A Step in Time (Fourth Thursday of every month): Punta Gorda is a community steeped in history. On this day, we invite visitors to discover our past, enjoy our present and learn more about our future.
This day could include a historical mural tour and perhaps trolley rides from museum to museum. A business could host a tea with old timers telling their tales. A local bike shop could host a historical bike ride. A quilt shop could demonstrate quilting arts. A civic group could host a local historian. An individual could teach how to make pine straw baskets. Click here to see Sample Web Page - A Step in Time
Target Markets:
Our primary target market will be our neighors within the county as well as day trippers from surrounding counties. Our target market will also include those who boat in and those who fly in. With a new airline comimg, we need to make sure that these travelers spend some time in Punta Gorda before running off to other communities. A secondary market is the new businesses that we are hoping to attract. If we WOW them with our great community effort maybe they'll be more excited about locating here!
Promotion: When we began brain storming ideas on how to promote this initiative many ideas came pouring out. Newspaper, radio and TV marketing (PSA), press releases, etc. Everyone would be encourage to help promote this Initiative. We would use a non profit community web site to list the weeks events. Currently we are using www.puntagordashopping.com but we have acquired domain names like discoverpuntagorda.org and thinkthursday.com and will be setting up these as well. We want to make it easy for people to find us. Businesses and organizations in our community would be encouraged to link to our main web site and to include it in their individual advertising.
This community web site is a great tool for our community but not if it remains buried in the tool box. For a web site to be effective, people have to know about it. To that end, we are seeking page sponsors for over 50 web pages. For a one time donation of $200 an individual, civic group or business can sponsor a page for the next six months. If all 50 pages are sponsored, this would create a $10,000 marketing fund to use to promote the Think Thursdays Tourism Initiative and to promote tourism in our community. Visitors would visit the web site and discover the page sponsors. We are not sure who would administer these funds yet but it would be a non profit entity like the Punta Gorda Chamber of Commerce. The funds would only be used for marketing this initiative and for maintenance of the web site. To see how your sponsorship page could look, click here:
Sample Page 1 Sample Page 2 Sample Page 3
Growing a Tourism Data Base: Part of this Initiative needs to include the collection of email addresses from our visitors so we can notify them of future events. This can easily be done using constant contact and the website's contact collection tools.
Organizational Structure: The organizational structure is still being sorted out but it is hoped that this will be a collaborative effort of many organizations with the suppport of many volunteers. Perhaps the best way to form committees is to have one committee for each theme week that way each committee is only responsible for one day a month. For example the "Step in Time" committee might include representatives from the historical society, Main Street Punta Gorda, local museums and community volunteers with a passion for history.
It will NOT be the committees' job to plan and put on events. Their job is to recruit businesses, civic groups and individuals to do their own events. They would assist individuals who might want to teach a class to find a public forum. They might help match volunteers from the volunteer pool to help with the events. And, they would collect information about all the events and relay that information to whomever would be posting the events on the web site.
Timing: Time is of the essence. This is not a project that we can ponder for weeks before implementing. It doesn't have to be perfected before it is launced it just has to be good!
Our goal would be to have all restaurants and retail businesses at Fishermen's Village, downtown and through out the community open until at least 8 pm on Thursday evenings from mid October to the end of April. If its successful it could be continued through the summer.
There are a total of 20 Thursdays (excluding Thanksgiving and Christmas) between October 1st and May 1st. Assuming the businesses are already open until 5 pm that's just 3 extra hours a day x 20 days or an extra open 60 hours! A reasonable commitment of time and resources when you consider the potential return on your investment.
Summary: This tourism initiative will not solve all of our economic woes but it's a project that can be implemented in short order. Right now its probably the best idea we've got and time is of the essence. We believe the tourism initiative will garner wide community support. And, it will give all the groups that are working for the betterment of our community the opportunity to work together on a common project.
Whether your are a home owner worried about the value of your home or a business owner worried about your bottom line the state of our local economy affects us all. We encourage you to get involved with this initutive. If you want to learn more or have an idea you would like to share, please email Cindee Murphy at
piesandplates@comcast.net or John Wright at the Punta Gorda Chamber of Commerce -
JRWright@puntagorda-chamber.com.
Please help us spread the word about this inititative. If you would like to foward this message to a friend click below:
